US lawmakers request further review of EA acquisition

I see the sun is fitting to rise again as I write this, so that means stupid levels of money have been handed over in the name of “business.” Or as some reports suggest, the FTC has a word about mergers before doing nothing, again. No, I’m not talking about the Warner Bros and Netflix deal; believe it or not, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) acquisition of EA is back in the spotlight. This time, from a letter sent to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Andrew Ferguson.

As first reported by Aftermath, the US Congressional Labor Caucus has sent Ferguson a letter asking the incumbent Chair and commissioner of the FTC, with 46 House Democrats as signatories, to review the leveraged buyout. The letter itself is pretty basic in laying out the majority of the games industry’s problems for the last few years, including: “EA has eliminated more than 1,700 U.S. jobs since 2023, contributing to an industry-wide total of over 35,000 layoffs since 2022.“

As well as highlighting the messy nature of this acquisition. This acquisition is led by the PIF, Affinity Partners, and the private equity firm Silver Lake, owners of Endeavor Group Holdings, itself owner of TKO Group, owner of WWE and UFC. As well as Silver Lake’s ownership of Unity Technologies. If that sounds bad, the PIF owns LIV Golf, a direct competitor to the PGA Tour and 2K Sports’ PGA Tour games. Silver Lake owns TKO and, as a result, WWE, which works with 2K Sports to make the WWE 2K games. This merger would put a lot of sports/entertainment brands under one very large roof.

However, the main focus of the Caucus’ objections is those layoffs, the ownership’s controlling interest in competitors, and lastly, the merger guidelines surrounding mergers that harm workers, suppress wages, or enable dominant firms to reduce labor demands, violating antitrust laws set out by the FTC back in 2023.

Stating: “Given the scale of this acquisition and EA’s current dominance over the domestic video-game labor market, we believe careful scrutiny of this deal is essential. The transaction also raises serious concerns about interlocking directorates and common ownership across competing game publishers. This kind of overlap heightens the risk of coordinated anti-labor practices, including wage suppression, hiring restrictions, or informal no-poach dynamics[,] and could further weaken the already limited bargaining power workers have in this industry.” Additional concerns are raised over “national security” due to EA’s ability to collect personal data from millions of consumers.

The trouble with the latter points is simple: the FTC chair was only appointed as a commissioner back in April of 2024 and became the FTC chair on January 20th, 2025. However, as reported by the New York Times in December of 2024, before Ferguson took the chair under the current President, Ferguson promised to ease up on policing American Companies. Something we’re seeing with the yet-to-be-confirmed wholesale acquisition of Warner Bros by Netflix, with an estimated market share of a third of all entertainment.

Without being actively political about it, the US Congress is feckless at the best of times, and more importantly, we’re ignoring the fact that the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could see benefits from this merger. Back in 2021, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, an investment fund run by Kushner and, according to Reuters, a staff of 20 people. Affinity is one of the investors in the proposed leveraged buyout, and itself is funded largely by Saudi money through the PIF.

Do I think this letter by Caucus House Democrats like Maxine Dexter, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Greg Landsman, and so on will make a difference? No, are you having a laugh? The sitting President ordered a special forces hit on a foreign leader under the pretenses of drugs, is now controlling that foreign nation’s oil supply, and pocketing the profits in a Qatari bank account under his control. I think the deal that enriches his family more will go through, covered in K-Y Jelly.